Questions from my newly blazered, secondary school boy. Questions I am delving deep into the greying recesses of my mind to answer.

The “Which is it?” is easier than the “Why?” But that’s French for you.

Ben has recently been struggling with one of the biggest changes in his life.
After 3 years of striding from home to school in barely 2 minutes, he now sets off on the school bus before the mist has lifted, carrying a backpack worthy of the 1970s Hippie Trail, lacking only a tent and sleeping bag for verisimilitude.

After using just one classroom per year, he now has to find 6 different classrooms a day, often in buildings at opposite ends of the site.

And he no longer learns about Science: he studies Biology, Chemistry and Physics.

With all this change comes a new phenomenon which has curtailed his after-school freedom to range across the parish with a couple of mates and a Swiss Army knife.
I speak of homework – something that causes me more pain now than it did when I was having to do it on my own behalf.

- RE (match these unintelligible symbols with the appropriate religion)
- Chemistry (list the meanings of the following warning signs)
- Maths (work out all these angles, sucker)
- French (see above)
- English (at last, one I can manage that without too much trouble)
- Biology (find 20 wood lice and bring them into school, yes, 20)
- Every subject (cover your book in clear plastic, my favourite task)

Yesterday I supervised French, English and spellings.

Today Blog Fodder did the honours with RE, claiming he knew more about it than I do. Not something I have noticed in the last 13 years.

Tomorrow – it’ll probably be Maths as I haven’t suffered under the yoke of the hypotenuse for a few days.
But I do know this concept of inflicting yet more work on children after a hard day’s work will be the ruination of our evenings for many a long month.

I wasn’t against homework at primary school. A little gentle reading, a few easy spellings and the odd attempt to understand partitioning kept us on our toes and let us know what our children were doing all day.

But these last few weeks have hurled us into a hideous hinterland of half-remembered theories and long-forgotten tenses. If our bosses did this to us the unions would be onto them, asking for overtime, talking about stress and the need for down-time.
But it’s accepted that children can work, then work, then work again.

Does it help them? I don’t know yet. I just know it’s not good for me. Friends have agreed it is “a nightmare” “Arsenic Hour” “like being back at school”. And if we find it hard, us grown-ups who’ve lived a little, imagine how the poor wee mites are feeling about this metaphorical brick bat that’s just smacked them in the face.

On the plus side, it’s giving me a chance to revise my geometry.
I’m not sure that knowing the sum of angles in a triangle is going to help me to discuss tax and spending options for the next 3 years though. Bring on the Economics A-level.

We’re constantly being told about the benefits of keeping pets – they minimise the risk of developing allergies, lower our blood pressure and teach children empathy and a sense of responsibility.

In our house, pets have merely raised our blood pressure and created conflict.

We started off at the bottom of the evolutionary chain, with ‘Sea Monkeys’. Having read the instructions I wasn’t hopeful that these little larvae would add much to our lives.

The packaging clearly stated that anyone over the age of 35 would not be able to see the eggs without the aid of a magnifying glass. That excluded half the family from the excited anticipation of imminent new life.

But Hannah was enthralled and keen to measure out the correct amount of water, mix in sachets of powder, and observe the floating specks that she insisted were sea monkey eggs and I suspected were stray nits.

Every day she carefully aerated these invisible particles of detritus. If you haven’t experienced the joys of Sea Monkeys, this involves pouring the contents of the little plastic container into a jug and back again, three times. This, it says on the packet, will give them plenty of oxygen.

Evidently not enough, in our case.

Next rung up the evolutionary ladder were Stick Insects. You don’t get much for free these days but a neighbour was giving them away. Sadly they’re only slightly more endearing than Sea Monkeys and are over-enthusiastic breeders. I fear Jersey Royal potatoes may be facing a new pest in the years to come.

We realised we would have to move onto something warm-blooded, so after a carefully orchestrated war of attrition we agreed to the two guinea pigs for our son’s birthday. They are furry, they don’t bite and don’t live for more than 8 years.

On the plus side they are relatively maintenance-free. You can take them on the ferry to France and no-one bats an eye-lid.
But they’re scared of their own shadows. They endure being handled, rather than like it. They’re simply not affectionate in the way that children demand and you can’t escape the fact they’re a bit, well, boring.

So with the next birthday we took another step up the double helix. A rabbit this time, for our daughter. She’s still a relative novelty (the rabbit, not the daughter) but so far she’s been a big hit. She definitely likes a cuddle.

We’ve even introduced her to the guinea pigs – a little sniffing and the newcomer was accepted as an oversized member of the cavey club.

Until the dawn of the mating season.

In the last few weeks I have had to remove an amorous bunny from a furiously squeaking guinea pig countless times, and we are anticipating it will take a hefty vet’s bill to dampen her ardour.
All three animals may be female, but internet pet forums confirm that this matters not a jot when Spring is in full flood. Any port in a storm.

For now, we think the rabbit has plugged the pet-gap, but they still complain that Sunday walks would be more fun with a dog and I fear the barriers are crumbling. I’ve even been heard arguing the merits of standard poodles.

And I don’t have a leg to stand on. I grew up with cats, dogs, goldfish and tortoises, so how can I deny my own children their turn?

Of course once the initial excitement has evaporated and we’ve managed a summer’s worth of willing walks, guess who will be getting up early to give the puppy its morning constitutional, clearing up after accidents and dealing with the vet’s bills.

Political activism is alive and well in rural Jersey – albeit in the under-11s.

My daughter wants to start a Facebook campaign to Save Gas Place Car Park. It’s not that she has anything against trees, she’s just worried the walk from car to ballet may become unacceptably long if we have to find somewhere else to park.

And my son demonstrated Scargill-esque disgust when I said I may not be able to nip into town to buy him a plectrum, as I had a lunchtime meeting and a very busy day at work.

“You’re entitled to a lunch break” he complained, outraged that he would have to wait an extra day before a Spongebob plectrum would be his.
“You should quit if you don’t get a lunch break.”

There was a time when their understanding of politics was limited to confusing BBC news presenters with Tony Blair.

Now they know the names of all three main political parties and have views on each of their leaders’ names – not on their policies though. I’m hoping that will come later.

There was a time, on the daily walk to school, when my son commented – “But a woman can’t be prime minister.” And he looked up at me in confusion, as if something didn’t compute.

For a second I paused. I was going to have to use Maggie as an example of female achievement if I was going to nip this one in the bud.

On balance, I decided that widening my son’s perceptions about the relative career options for men and women was important enough to make me swallow hard and offer the Milk Snatcher up as a positive role model for my daughter.

So I replied –
“Of course a woman can be prime minister. There’s already been one. Her name was Margaret Thatcher and she was in charge of the country in the 1980s”
And so I continued, until they got bored and ran ahead to wait for me at the next road junction.

These days they are keenly aware of topical issues and berate me if I leave the telly on standby and don’t get around to donating to Haiti/Red Nose Day/Sport Relief/Children in Need.

My daughter’s learning about electric circuits, so I’m anticipating a lecture on why we should use low energy lightbulbs – which I would if they radiated a useful amount of light.
I’m past the first flush of youth and need high watt incandescence to read by.

But I have just had some useful advice from my son, which I will try to remember the next time I start to feel irritation erupting at yet another example of sloppy work, bad service or rudeness.

I was complaining about something – it could have been one of a number of things I am starting to find more and more annoying – and he said, “You find a lot of things outrageous Mummy. You need to chill.”

He’s probably right.
But given his response to my overstuffed working day and occasional lack of a lunchbreak, he’ll be finding the lunacies of life just as outrageous as me in a few years time.

Not as a British protest vote against the Americanisation of Mothering Sunday.
And not as a way to decide, once and for all, where the apostrophe goes… Mother’s Day? Mothers’ Day?
But as a way to manage my expectations.

I have decided to call it, privately at least, Mother’s Hour.

That way I won’t be disappointed when the simpering smiles, loving cuddles and ostentatious Best Behaviour mode fade before the first cereal bowl hits the kitchen table.
And it means I can enjoy a pleasant half-hour of home-made cards, poems and presents, before wiping from my mind the conviction that I’m surely entitled to an entire day of this special treatment.

Last year my daughter expressed outrage that there was no Children’s Day.
Surely if there’s a Fathers Day and a Mothers Day, there should be one for children, she reasoned.

“Every day is children’s day,” I replied, “you two live the life of Riley…” And there I was stopped, interrupted by a chorus of two, enquiring –
“What’s the life of Riley?”

When I was a child, Mothering Sunday meant making my mother a card and giving her a daffodil.
Now it’s a massive industry and some years I even get perfume if Daddy is feeling beneficent.

Two years ago I had advance warning from my son that home-made was off the menu. At least, I think that’s what he was getting at when he opened a conversation that went something like –

“I’ve decided Jay isn’t my friend any more.”
“Why’s that?”
“He doesn’t know how to play Dodge Ball.”
I had to pause a moment to absorb the logic, before replying.
“That’s no reason to decide he’s not your friend, can’t you teach him how to play?”
“And he tore up my work. I had to start again… so I haven’t finished your Mothers’ Day card.”

At last – we get to the point of the story. And there’s more.

“I thought we had to do our seascape then finish our Mothers’ Day cards, but by the time I’d finished my seascape I had no time to finish my card. I didn’t know we were supposed to finish our Mothers’ Day cards and then do our seascapes. So I haven’t done it.”

“Never mind,” I said, light heartedly, “you’ve still got a day to finish it off before the Big Day.”

And he looked at me all squiffy-eyed. “I think your card’s going to have to come from a shop this year.”

I suppose there are worse things than a shop-bought card.
Last year he more than made up for it with a superb flower arrangement courtesy of Cubs.

And then there are the poems, like this one from my daughter –

My Mum’s an excellent cook
Acrobat is a word to describe her
Marvellous muffins is her speciality
Art is another speciality she has.

Sweet, yes, but a long way from the truth.
- I could once do backflips, but I’ve never made a muffin.
- My children stopped asking “Can you draw me a cat Mummy” when they realised they could do it better themselves.
- Excellent is not a word I’ve heard them use to describe their tea. Sometimes it’s “Yeuch” or “I’m not eating that” and occasionally I get a surprised “That was quite nice Mummy”.

But I guess Mothers’ Day is a time for little white lies.

So this year I will be lying to myself.
When two little voices wish me “Happy Mother’s Day” and then bicker about whose card I should open first, I will stick my fingers in my ears, think “Happy Hour” and sip my coffee in the hope that one day that hour will extend to an entire day.

Now the festive storm has passed, we can spend our downtime trying to navigate the multiple functions on our shiny new cameras, phones and laptops.

They all seem to do much more than anyone could need in a human lifespan. But if you have a problem with your new gismo, pop round to our place and ask our kids. They are absorbing techno-babble like I used to hope they’d soak up foreign languages.

First it was Club Penguin. They were nattering on about that for months before I realised that it was a chat room: a highly moderated kiddy-lite chat room, but still a chat room.
Then it was Animasher and You Tube.
Now they’ve followed their friends onto Facebook.

Luckily, I’m up to speed on this one. With Club Penguin I had to learn how to navigate the virtual arctic tundra to check what they were doing there. But I’ve been on Facebook for years. Hell, I was on it when you had to be a student to get on it.

So before allowing them on, I bore them to death with checking their privacy settings, insisting they become my ‘friends’, committing their passwords to memory and establishing that they know why they have to be careful online.

I use a handy newspaper article to discuss what I assume will be a difficult subject.
“So that’s how you spell paedophile,” says Ben, more astonished at the vagaries of the English language than at the horrors of human behaviour. Cue a short discussion about the Greek derivation of many of our words.

I drill them regularly about accepting only ‘friends’ they know in the real world. They take this so much to heart that they rigorously interrogate any friend request from people they don’t immediately recognise, even distant cousins who share their surname.

But once all that’s sorted, I am faced with a new dilemma. Do I really want the children entering my own online world?

Certainly not.

At the risk of being accused of hypocrisy, I have mercilessly adjusted my own privacy settings so they don’t receive any of my status updates.

Christmas is looming large and loud in our house. Lists are dotted about the kitchen in unnaturally tidy handwriting, featuring ponies, playmobil, i-phones and other expensive electronic gadgetry.
The home-made advent calendar has been patched up ready to hold 24 daily trinkets for just one more year and we are on the trail of costumes for the school play.

When the children were at nursery, the slacker parents (me included) could get away with cutting holes in old sheets, wrapping tinsel around a wire coat hanger and telling our daughters what beautiful angels they made.

But those days are over.

At their last school, the Christmas Show required a Victorian street urchin costume for one child and a dalek outfit for the other. I think even Russell T Davies would have had trouble fitting the song about sausages and pizza into his Victorian Christmas Dr Who episode.

I am not handy with a sewing machine, but I can read. So when it seemed the show owed something, however small, to an idea first mooted by Charles Dickens, I suggested, helpfully I thought, that I should read A Christmas Carol to them at bedtime.

Their response was immediate and scathing… “We don’t need you to read it to us, we watched the DVD at school.”

There’s nothing like being a parent to put you firmly in your place.

This year, we’ve been getting a regular countdown.
“Only 32 weeks until Christmas.”
“It’s November now.”
“Has Gran asked what we want yet? Tell her money.”

Last year our son started showing signs that the concept of Father Christmas was losing its sparkle.
“I’m not sure I believe in Father Christmas, lots of my friends at school don’t.”

The first evidence of our children moving into middle age was a shock, especially after all the years of seasonal subterfuge:-
- scoffing most of a mince pie, leaving just a few crumbs in front of the fireplace
- crunching on a carrot, artfully leaving a morsel that Rudolf just couldn’t manage
- slugging back the sherry and filling the stockings with presents wrapped in paper they hadn’t seen lying around the house (especially hard to achieve, that last one)

And still we have bred a Doubting Thomas.

The worst of it was, his comment was blurted out in front of his younger sister, who should still have a few years of sublime belief to enjoy.
And he didn’t stop there.

“When Father Christmas gave me a remote control helicopter because he knew I wanted one, you knew I wanted one too, so how come you didn’t give me a helicopter as well? How did you know he was going to give me one?”

Felled by the killer instinct of a child. If he could only apply that laser-sharp logic to his school work, we would surely be parenting a mini-Einstein.

Now another year rolls round and I am wondering whether he has passed the point of questions and moved into a new phase of humouring his parents, going along with their strange festive fantasies, just to make sure at least some of the items on his wish list turn up, from whatever source, on Christmas morning.

As the prospect of Christmas shopping threatens to crowd out the hazy fragments of summer memories, I decide to surprise the children with a question.

“What do you prefer,” I say, nonchalantly, “Hallowe’en or Bonfire night?”

As I utter the words, images from my childhood flash through my mind. Weekends spent stuffing and dressing a Guy, just to watch it burn in my cousins’ back garden.
A Catherine Wheel, banged half-heartedly into a tree with a bent nail, spinning off into the distance, children scattering in all directions.
And best of all, running, squealing down the path, followed by fizzing Jumping Jacks.

I loved Bonfire Night.

“Hallowe’en!” they chorus. It takes me a while for the truth to sink in.

“Hallowe’en?” I ask.

“There’s skeletons and parties…”

“And sweets!”

They are, for once, as one. I blame the Americans. If it weren’t for Trick or Treating, what would Hallowe’en consist of?

A party? Yeah, maybe.

Fancy dress? Well, yeah.

But door-knocking for sweets? It’s turned into licensed begging and I can hardly believe that we Brits are allowing our proud, political history to be overshadowed by this turnip lantern travesty of a tradition.

Poor old “Penny fo the Guy” can’t hope to win through.

Even I have been sucked into it. I, who was barely aware of Hallowe’en as a child.

Round our way we have to be careful. There’s one door we can’t knock on again because one year we were invited in.
Great, we thought, child-friendly house. But no. Not for us a few pear drops and a sherbet lemon. We were lined up on the sofa to benefit from an earnest, born again sermon.

We left, what seemed like hours but was probably only minutes later, our fists filled with leaflets that documented in graphic detail the error of our Pagan ways.

And then there are the house-sharers two doors down who sit, lights blazing and curtains open, blatantly watching telly and ignoring the plaintive knocking of our indignant offspring.

“What’s their problem?” complains our son, whose skeleton outfit is shaking with the righteous rage of the primary school know-it-all, “we only want a few sweets.”

Last year we decided to make a bit more of Bonfire night, in an effort to take them out of their Haribo comfort zone. So we trooped off to sample a fully catered, pub-based, Guy Fawkes experience.

The food, when we reached it, was good.
The beer, when Dad had queued for it, was refreshing.
The bonfire, once the wrong direction of wind ruled out a massive blaze next to the nearby housing estate, was small.
But the fireworks were “awesome” said son, and “loud” said daughter, who borrowed a friend’s ear muffs.

It was nearly a year ago that Ben (now ten) had his first brush with childhood romance.
Her name was Sandra and she’s in his class.

It lasted a few weeks, the summer holidays intervened and on their return to school it was all over.

“She can’t play football,” was Ben’s verdict.

Well she must have been practising her ball skills in the meantime, as he’s come over all Charlotte Harvey-faced again and every night at bedtime I get to hear how they sat next to each in Art class and drew the same grapefruit.

Or how they played on Club Penguin and kept popping hearts up to each other while sitting, Emperor-like, together on a sofa in the coffee bar.

He brushes his hair carefully each morning and is easily persuaded to wash.
With soap.

He is even being realistic about the whole relationship thing.

“She’ll probably dump me soon,” he says, smiling. “Last time I dumped her before she could dump me. But she might be first this time.”

I now have to listen to tales of giggly chats over the watercolours, while insisting he continues with Cycling Proficiency training and piano lessons when he’d rather be playing footie with Sandra after school.

And he’s starting to ask me awkward questions. Not of the much-missed “What’s behind the sky?” variety.
But more like the “When did you first snog a boy?” and “Have you ever been drunk?” type.

In case you’re interested my answers were “I was older than you are now” (with a bit of a harumph in my voice) and “Ye-es but not very”.

If I were being brutally honest I could have said “12″ and just plain “Yes.”

But all the experts say we should answer their questions honestly, with just enough information for their age. And I think that just about does it.
For now.

I thought it was time to check how savvy my children are about staying safe online.

They don’t really use the computer to talk to their friends yet, but they do play on Club Penguin, which has moderated chat rooms and is probably a good introduction to the 21st century world of digital connections.

For months after Ben had started chattering about this great new game he’d found, I didn’t even realise there were other, real people involved.
I was vaguely aware that there were a lot of strangely dressed little penguins scuttling about on-screen with brightly coloured, hairy bobbles following behind them.
But that was as far as it went.

Then one day Hannah mentioned that all the penguins in the room she was in suddenly disappeared when the moderator turned up to tell someone off.

Moderator?
I discovered that there were, in fact, other children operating other penguins, and that they could all select pre-determined messages to send to each other.

Things like “Hi” and “Wanna be friends?”

I discovered that Hannah has 80 buddies – far more than I have on Facebook.

She has some advice for me –
“I just go around asking people, Do you want to be my buddy? Do you want to be my buddy? And they do.”

Simple, when you’re 8.

So today, after Ben tells me he and some school friends have arranged to meet up on-line at 6.30pm in a pre-determined cafe on a particular Club Penguin server, I casually say –

“You do know not to give out your real name and address and phone number on line don’t you?”
“Why?” asks Hannah.

“Don’t they talk to you about things like that at school?”
“No,” says Ben.

“Well, when you’re on-line the people you’re talking to might not really be who they say they are. They might be…” I struggle to find a way to describe the terrifying possibilities they don’t yet know exist… “bad people, bullies.”

“Well I don’t see how they can bully me if they’re not even in the same room as me,” says sensible Hannah.

On one of my many trips in and out of the room containing the computer, I find Ben typing a message.

“What’s that about?” I ask.
“It’s a question for Aunt Arctic,” he replies.

He’s trying to get a letter published in the Club Penguin Times, and has drafted something along the lines of –
“Dear Aunt Arctic, I’m really worried that my friend keeps giving out his name and password. I’ve told him not to, but he says not to fuss. I’m really worried and I don’t know what to do.”

When I show concern that one of his friends is doing this, he says,
“I’m not really worried, I just thought it would be a good way of getting a question printed in the paper.”

When they’re in bed, and Hannah has reassured me that she hasn’t met any burglars online, I can’t resist sneaking onto the site to have a look around.

It’s late, and Town seems to have been taken over by eco-warriers and disco-divas, all inviting each other to parties in their igloos and to “Turn green if you support Earth”.

I’m masquerading as Ben (who foolishly told me his name and password) and am trying my best not to lose him any cash. This means I can’t accept invitations to play games with anyone, as my ineptitude would surely mean losing some of the coins he has amassed in previous contests.

My constant refusals may give him a reputation for rudeness, but at least he will be able to buy food for his puffles (the brightly-coloured hairy bobbles that follow the penguins about) tomorrow after school.

I end up inadvertently interacting with someone, by inviting them for a coffee.
I follow them inside the cafe, but once there I can’t recognise which penguin I’ve invited.
I spend a few minutes whirling around, wondering who I’m supposed to be sitting next to.

When I notice a penguin sitting on its own, its face to the wall with a sulky-faced emoticon hovering overhead, I waddle across to face the music.

But as I haven’t yet found a way to say anything other than the pre-set “Hi” “Howdy” and “Hey There” options, I’m a bit stuck for conversation.
So my new friend gets bored and wanders away.

Time I did the same, before Ben is ostracised by all right-thinking penguins.

I had to take Ben to work a few weeks ago. It was just for an hour in between clashing delivery timetables – delivery of children to after-school activities, not babies into the world.

I know 9 isn’t 2, and his tantrum, plate-throwing days are (mostly) over. But he can be unpredictable, and he is always persistent. So I wasn’t sure how disruptive he’d be for the 4 colleagues with whom I share an office.

Reader, I was stunned.
I think I will take him to work with me every time I want a bit of peace.

He sat at the table next to me, reading his comic, looking up through his over-long surfer-dude fringe, too intimidated to say more than “Hello” “Yes” and “No”.

It was only afterwards that I realised he’d been earwigging intently the whole time.

“Do you chat all day at work?”
“You swore.”
“You’re so bossy.”

I stand, justly accused of all three offences.
But at least he’s got some idea of what I do. I chat, swear and am a bit (only a bit, mind) bossy.

I’ve been in this job for more than a year now, and my mother’s still asking me – “What is it you do, actually?”

My daughter doesn’t need to ask. Apparently I sit at a computer all day, playing games.

She used to be much more au fait with my world of work.
As a toddler she made regular appearances at the BBC, whenever her father’s work commitments stopped him from fetching her from nursery on his appointed days.

She’d sit next to me, enjoying the delights of a swivel chair, munching whatever chocolate-based substance I could buy from the shop next door, imperiously demanding attention, drinks and access to every knob within reach.

“Don’t touch that,” was my main response to her incessant chatter, as I tried to update the headlines, dial up the next interviewee and generally produce a live, drivetime, radio programme.

She’s older and wiser now, but she’s still not sure what my boss does.

“Does he sit at his desk eating sandwiches?” she asks.

“Does he put his feet up on the desk and have his feet shaved and his legs waxed?” she continues, somewhat bizarrely.

“He makes decisions,” I say.

“That’s easy,” she replies, with the confidence of a just-8-year old who recently told me her friend lives on an estatement.
“I can do that. I’ve decided not to go to school tomorrow.”